Jeconiah

Jeconiah

(jēkōnī`ə): see JehoiachinJehoiachin, in the Bible, king of Judah. He was king for a few months (c.598 B.C.) after the death of his father, Jehoiakim. He and his court were carried away into exile by Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon and imprisoned......Click the link for more information..

Jeremiah 28:1-4 informs us that in the early reign of King Zedekiah, a certain prophet by the name of Hananiah declared in the name of the Lord that God would break the yoke of Babylon and in two years, all the holy vessels of the Temple taken by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon would be restored, and the captive King Jeconiah and all the exiles would be returned.

Jeremiah's oracle to Jeconiah and the cessation of the throne of David

In this case, the text under consideration was a divine decree pronounced upon the offspring of Jeconiah, the exiled king of Judah.

Partly because Matthew named Jeconiah among Jesus' forefathers (1:11-12), Christian commentators devoted much effort to discovering the meaning of the divine damnatio memoriae depriving him of successors to the throne.

In Eusebius' view, all of this confirmed the veracity of the divine decree against Jeconiah.

There is no question in Basil's mind that the sentence imposed on Jeconiah was realized in Nebuchadnezzar's destruction of his kingdom and the post-exilic changes instituted in the form of government.

The effect of the injunction against Jeconiah is permanently to expunge any prospects for the restoration of the Davidic royal line; following this decree, dominion had been ceded to the post-exilic high priests of mixed royal and priestly descent.

Arguing against `certain mistaken interpreters' [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), Hippolytus of Rome denies that the Jeconiah recorded in Matthew's genealogy could possibly be the same king condemned by Jeremiah.

Directly before this comment, Eusebius quotes the passage in Jeremiah's oracle (22:30) depriving Jeconiah of successors to `rule again in Judah [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII])'.

The marginal notes of the Geneva edition explain that the eagle represents the King of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, and the highest branch of the cedar represents Jeconiah (variant of Jehoiachin), the King of Israel who had been taken into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar (and, as it turned out, put in prison for thirty-six years).

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